Recently

On Friday we had a farewell karaoke party for Douglas who is returning home after working with us at AIST for two months. It was lots of fun. And the Japanese are great at karaoke. And we were able to detect many “interest points” in the pieces. Here are some pictures.

Drinking...



And singing...



And that’s me, singing the Beatles “Yesterday”, probably with my mic turned off. Hiro was so nice to help me out with that difficult song.



And this is what is what we were looking at ... random videos with subtitles.



Afterwards we went to an Australian bar. In a dramatic game of pool the Europeans defeated the Japanese :-)



This is the view from my window at work. A sight I enjoy almost everyday.



I learned to say: “Chotto hen desu ne?” (Bisserl verrueck, oder?) This friendly Brazilian capoerista is driving while the picture is taken.



I noticed that there are only very few trash bins. Recently I found some instructions on how to deal with this problem:
“After the corner was turned, the trash was tossed away. It was a blind spot in the city.” In the lower right it says “meet your delight”. (Picture taken at a train station)



By the way, the Sockenpabst has moved to a new address. In her most recent blog entry she explains (in German) why they always give us so much plastic junk at the supermarket. Actually, the first phrase I learned to say and most frequently use is: “Spoon wa keko desu.” (Thanks, but I don’t need a plastic spoon with that yoghurt.)

Last weekend we had a capoeira event at a bonfire party. This picture was taken after our performance and shortly before the fire was lighted.



While warming up we had some difficulties getting used to the wet and slippery grass. It was lots of fun, and some of us (like me) got really dirty :-)

Bicycling: Non-Verbal Communication

Today I noticed something so extremely interesting that I decided to share it with the world (at least with that part of the world that looks at my blog) :-)

When bicycling I often use my nose and my eyes to communicate where I want to go. This helps when cycling through crowded pedestrian zones or when there is an ambiguous situation with another cyclist. It works really well, and it’s a technique I learned when working as a bicycle messenger. So basically it works like this: I point my nose and eyes to the ground about 2-3 meters in direction I intend to cycle (and continuously stare in the direction I'm heading to). Others usually understand, and either realize that I am no danger to them (even if I'm moving fast or close to them), or will move out of the way (if I have the right of way). This works in Vienna (tried at least a million times) and London (tried a few times). However, this does not seem work in Japan!

I’ve tried it about 4 times now (in Tsukuba). Every time it failed... every time the other person reacted as if they did not know where I was heading to. I’m pretty sure now that it simply does not work. Maybe because in general Japanese don’t have such big noses which can be used to point into certain directions? Or maybe it doesn’t work because the others never try to look into my eyes? It actually seems that they prefer to look at the ground themselves. I’d love to ask a bicycle messenger in Tokyo how they manage to quickly move through crowds of people without scaring everyone (and thus resulting in people jumping directly into the direction you wanted to cycle to...). Or maybe Tokyo is different from Tsukuba? I wish I could spend some more time investigating this... but today I learned on Wikipedia, that post-docs are supposed to work 80+ hours per week. That means I'm still a few hours short this week, and if I want to spend my weekend doing other things, I better start getting some work done now...

The Loudest Insect in the World

Just in front of my door an insect has decided to settle and start it’s mating call. I had no idea how loud a single insect can be. At first I thought it might even be a fire alarm. Here is the picture of this amazing Japanese individual. It’s about as big as my camera.

Goto's Lab

Masataka Goto is supervising my work at AIST. At the same time he is supervising at least 7 other students at the lab. Most of them are spending one or two months of their summer vacations at AIST (like an internship).

I've seen various styles of supervision of students, but I've never seen anyone so intensively supervising so many students at the same time. Sometimes it seems that he has meetings with students all day... one day after the other. All students have very different topics. And all of these topics are really interesting. None of the students needs to worry that another student could "steal" an idea from them, or come up with a solution to the problem they are working on before they do. Instead they identify areas where results from one project could help another one, and work together. Every student also seems to have a very clear picture of what they are working on, what the next steps could be, and how they want to evaluate progress. It's amazing!

I used to think that the best way to work together in research is to be working towards the same goal. I guess that can work really well in special cases, but it is somehow a problem when you need to write two different doctoral dissertations about the same topic, or when it comes to the order of authors on a publication. However, given this experience in Goto's lab I think the best way (in computer science) is to work on different but somehow related topics and just sit next to each other. (Most of the students' topics deal with music analysis in some way.) However, this also means that one needs to come up with many interesting topics to work on...

BTW, today I learned that in Japan the labs at universities are officially named after the professors. Instead of names such as "Intelligent Music Processing Group", "Music Technology Group", or "Centre for Digital Music", the last name of the professor is used. In general it seems that professors are very highly respected. However, it seems a bit strange to me that the name of the professor is more important than the research field the group is actually working on.

Here is a picture of Masataka at his desk. He actually did some cleaning before I was allowed to take a picture... but I didn't notice any difference :-)



These are the students Masataka supervises (including Masataka, Doug, and me).



This picture was taken a few hours later at the "all-you-can-drink" place. (Yes, alcohol!)



And this is my new business card in Japanese! :-)



Business cards are very important in the Japanese communication culture. If I would give you one of my cards, you should receive it with both hands. Look at it, marvel at its beauty (or talk about how impressive the font is) and then after 10 minutes or so of admiring it, carefully put it into the special shiny metal case in which you store all the important business cards you receive. Do not take notes on the card! And do not stick the card in your back pocket! The way you treat the card is an indication of what you think about me :-)

Here are two updates to my last posts. First, here you can see what "PreKla" looks like when experts do it. And here (2.45MB) you can find a great video of the HRP2 robot (which is partly developed by some of my colleagues at AIST) dancing the dance which I saw the old ladies dance last Sunday.



Find out more about this dancing robot here (in Japanese).

4 Months

Tonight was the first time I experienced a delayed train in Japan. I waited 2.5 hours... until they announced that it will take at least 2 more hours... which is when Peter (an English teacher from Australia whom I met at the station) and I decided to share a taxi.

It was amazing how patiently everyone was waiting. Most people played with their cellphones or were sleeping. No one seemed angry or upset. They waited as if the train would arrive any minute... for hours. Only at one point one man (while waiting to get his ticket refunded) said something in a angry and loud way... but then the police (for some reason there were lots of police officers there) walked a few steps closer to him and he disappeared back into the waiting line. It seems that the Japanese can put themselves into a state of mind where nothing can bother them. I wonder if there have ever been any riots in this country.

Before I experienced the delayed train, I participated in a capoeira show. This time we did one at a small summer festival of a town somewhere in Ibaraki (I can't remember the name...). We only did a 10 minute show but we were treated as if he had performed a great rock concert. We got lots of free drinks and food, and everyone was really friendly :-)

At first I actually even felt they were being too friendly. Lucien (an African American) and me arrived almost an hour before the others from our group. The first reaction was that everyone (except the children) was staring at us... it was the first time I felt uncomfortable. But I guess in a small town community it is not unusual to stare at strangers and Lucien and me probably fitted into the festival like giraffen in a erdbeerfeld...

Anyway, the festival was great. Lots of little children playing, colorful kimonos, interesting music and decorations, and food specialties everywhere... there was a (very odd) performance where a small orchestra (all Japanese) played Hawaiian music, and then one very interesting one with big drums and old ladies dressed in kimonos dancing in a circle waving their hands above their heads. (It looked as though they had consumed something illegal.) There were lots of elderly people, some parents, and lots of little children running around. But not one teenager. I guess going to a small town's festival is a very uncool thing to do. I really regret that I forgot my camera. There were so many things I would have liked to take a picture of...

Last week my sister and some of her friends visited me. We had a great time in Tokyo. One thing we did is called "PreKra" (derived from "Print Club"). It's a fun thing, I definitely recommend it! Here are two of the many pictures we "created":

End of the Rainy Season

Today is officially the last day of the rainy season... I wonder if the clouds know about that too.

On Tuesday (in Japanese class) we learned how to count objects in Japanese. There are 16 different ways which are partly quite irregular. It depends if the objects are flat, or long, or small, or just things, or humans, or small animals, or machines,... I think the Japanese are a bit crazy. When I confronted my colleagues with that they told me they think it's strange that we attach genders to every noun in German. But what's wrong about that? Isn't it obvious that fork is female, spoon is male, and knife is a "it"?

Anyway, as usual I'm a bit too lazy to write much... and I got lots of work I should be doing. So I'll be posting pictures instead. (BTW, work is great, I'm finally finishing something I've wanted to finish ever since I've worked in Barcelona in 2003)

The first pictures were taken in Vienna during my vacation. I had a great time visiting family, friends, and Gwen. There is also a picture of the Austrian invention of "Schokobananen auf dem Grill". (I believe it was a certain vegetarian Dipl.Ing. Martin T. who invented it a few years ago.) Finally, there are some pictures of the capoeira workshop in Yokohama last weekend. I was given a yellow belt! (cordao amarillo) I was allowed to skip yellow-white :-) I think basically that means in a jogo with me you can use vingativas and rasteiras any time you want :-)
BTW, I finished reading a book which I can recommend about globalization (and mainly IMF failures) written by Stiglitz (Amazon).





The following picture was taken on one of Europe's most famous shopping streets (Fussgaengerzone Favoriten)...



This is the legendary Austrian invention. It is very oischiiii! (The brown pieces are chocolate.)

Three Months

Wow, 3 months have passed like 3 weeks. Saturday I'm Vienna. I might not have many chances to check my emails until Monday in a week.

Last weekend I had a chance to enjoy karaoke with some of the capoeiristas. It was very different to what I expected. First of all, they are awesome singers. Second, they are extremely polite when it comes to making you feel good about making a fool of yourself (they just clap their hands louder to the rhythm, or try to sing along even if they don't know English and have never heard the song before). It was great fun. At the end they even decided to sing a Christmas song just because they wanted to sing something where everyone (including me) could sing along... :-)

Last weekend Doug, his wife, another American, and me walked up the Tsukuba hill (<900m). It's a nice walk through beautiful forests. It's the main tourist attraction in Tsukuba area.

Here are some pictures. The first is the karaoke machine (the phone book is a book full of Japanese songs). The second shows the car which that plant was trying to cover up. (Unfortunately the gardeners recently decided to stop it.) The rest of the pictures is from the walk.















Finally, here is a picture within AIST. The panel shows how much power is consumed and how much of it is generated by the solar plants. The picture was taken on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Usually the value is around 0-2% (at that time it was an amazing 13.24%). Maybe the servers crashed ;-)